


Stinging and Older

by clutzycricket



Series: Pathways and Maybes [4]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dany wants a family, F/M, Mace Tyrell is Smarter than He Looks, Not Quite an Outlander AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-25
Updated: 2015-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-17 06:56:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4656945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Renee Leigh-Black, nurse, turns out to be Princess Rhaenys Targaryen.</p><p>This would be complicated enough, except for the fact that "Um, Dany, my very recently late husband gave me a toddler and was a wizard."</p><p>Things don't settle from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stinging and Older

1.)

it started with a cold and grieving princess in the snow, surrounded by dragons and their mother.

Or perhaps with a hurried transfer of a stirring toddler, with “Renee, _please_ , I’ll be back, I have to do this or we’ll never be safe,” and the next step in a young woman's quiet, settling knowledge that everyone she loved left her.

Or perhaps it was a young nurse stumbling on a young man with a bleeding head wound, and refusing to step aside.

Most would say, though, it started with a little girl swirled between worlds, bleeding and screaming.

 

2.)

The Mother of Dragons did not know what to make of her niece. She had been promised a dragon rider, a warrior princess who would bolster Danaerys’ work in Westeros. She had imagined a fierce woman with silver hair and a sharp sword, someone who was not at all the slight, shivering woman with dark eyes and the little boy who clung to her leg, peering out at everyone.

“My nephew by my late husband,” she explained, a deep and elegant grief in her words. She was following Danaerys and Lady Mormont, listening carefully to the words they said and adding the occasional polite comment. She followed them with the boy on her hip, a quiet rhythm to her movements but staying in their shadows.

They ended up in with the wounded, and Dany couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose a bit at the smell. She was reminded too much of Meereen and the fighting.

“Are those leeches?” Rhaenys asked, thoughtfully. Her hair, an artful mess of night black curls, was pulled carelessly back and spilling out of its bun, and she was biting her lip. Her borrowed, ill-fitting dress was showing the curve of her belly, the gift of her late husband and the cause of many of Tyrion Lannister’s mutterings. “They are sanitary leeches, right?”

“What do you know of healing, your highness?” came one of the Baratheon men, and the princess’ chin went up, a spark of something in her eyes.

“Work is best for grief,” Lady Mormont said to Dany, later, with a grin not terribly unlike her bear’s. “And she let slip that she used to tend the sick, before you and that Dornish witch of yours summoned her here.”

The healer’s wing was filled with the sound of the royal princess laughing with the men and answering maester’s calls, and there was something a little lonely about it.

 

3.)

“Queen Daenarys, King Aegon, King Tommen… all have fallen,” Mace Tyrell said, not unkindly. Lord Mace was not very good at unkind, not when kindness and a sort of silliness worked better for him.

Queen Rhaenys- Elinor supposed she was Queen, with Margaery’s name blackened and her poor cousin so very _tired-_ did not seem to belistening, but she said, a queer little smile on her face, “Pride does come before a fall, yes. Your daughter is well, I hope?”

“Aye, aye, Margaery is well,” he blustered, sitting on his oaken throne. There was a spark of amusement in his eyes, at this dark cloud of a queen. 

“I am happy to hear that. My cousin Tyene spoke well of her, in her trials, and she suffered under Lady Cersei and the High Sparrow,” she said, watching as her daughter played at her feet. “Lily,  _no_ , that does not go in your mouth!”

“Welcome to the Small Council,” Lord Mace might have murmured, except he  _couldn’t_  have, that was far more Lady Alerie’s sort of jest.

Well, perhaps thirty years of marriage did that.

“Aside from some distant cousins- the fire at Summerhall eradicated most of the family, but a few cousins survived, plus of course your bastard brother, there is no true claimant,” Mace frowned. “I can never keep it all straight, but Mother would know, she did mention getting out of marrying a Targaryen often enough. No offence meant, Your Grace…” he added, hastily. 

She laughed at that, something deep, velvety, and surprisingly infectious, and if it was anything like her mother, Elinor could understand how Prince Martell waited so long to avenge his sister. There were flashes of something warm in this queen, under her pleasantries. “Considering the comedy routine that was my elopement, Sirius would have found that hilarious.”

Lord Mace raised his eyebrows, and the queen smiled ruefully down at her daughter. “His family didn’t approve of me, to put it mildly.” She wrinkled her nose. “He jumped through hoops to marry me.” She paused. “Literally, once. I blame his friend Peter.”

“Ah,” said Lord Mace, wrongfooted. “Your  _late_  husband.”

“Yes,” the queen said, the only sign of whatever emotion she was holding at bay the faint tightening of her eyes. “He was... killed a couple days before Sarella brought me over.”

“I understand the lords have been petitioning you for your hand,” he said, aiming for sympathy.

The queen met him with a flat gaze, and Elinor noticed the bronze sun pins holding up her hair. “Your eldest son is still unwed,” she said, holding up a finger. “You have fertile fields, with the exception of those ravaged by the Iron Islanders, and the most remaining armies, many of whom are very close to the city.” 

“Well, yes,” Mace said, blinking as she listed all of the advantages he planned on bringing up over a longer period of time.

“I’m perfectly aware you are an intelligent man, Lord Tyrell,” she said, “as unintelligent men do not survive this city. You are also an adaptable man, as unadaptable men are eaten alive."

Occasionally literally, if some of the rumors were true.

"Yours…” She sighed. “I had a year, at least, to grieve.”

“Many do not have that, especially in wartime,” Lord Mace said, enthusiastically.  “My Margaery…”

Elinor schooled her features into smoothness. She had plenty of time to think, waiting for her trial, and Margaery would probably prefer a septry then marriage at this point.

 

4.)

“My Queen,” Willas said, holding a hand. He was kind, this husband of hers, towards Lilias and Harry as much as herself, and not as much a trial as she feared. But she missed the hospital, her foster family-  _god_ , she missed her sister, calling up Georgie and telling her anything, but Dany and Sarella had taken that from her and then gone and died before she’d lost her protective numbness enough to curse them out.

She kept her tears silent, though, and tried to tell Harry about his mother’s kindness, and Lily about her grandmother’s flower shop. 

And she was nearly losing it because the flowers were different. The _flowers_ were different. It was a stupid thing to be upset about, three years in, but spring was coming, earlier than predicted, with the breaking of the dead, and she missed the dried, lopsided crown that Remus and Georgie had presented her in lieu of a veil, and the general, amorphous knowledge that, “Oh, Renee’s family runs a flower shop” turning crazy around Valentine’s and anniversaries. 

She’d lost her name, even, and Rhaenys Targaryen, Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, felt far lonelier than Mrs. Renee Leigh-Black, RN, even with a lack of dark wizards trying to kill her.

She was trying, though, because Dad would frown at her, and Sirius would find it hilarious and her due, aside from Willas, and Georgie would take over the court the way Merry Crane did, only she would do it so Renee- Rhaenys, Rhaenys, Rhaenys- could have some privacy and put herself together. So she smiled at her Martell cousins, because Trys was too young to have been involved, and Myrcella’s scars were hardly the worst she’d seen, and had Myrcella named Lady of the Rock, which did an alarming amount to subdue Casterly Rock and Lannisport, especially when she named a Westerlander lord Edmure Tully recommended as one of her guardians. (Sam Tarly acted as Maester, and a Dornish lord for the third.) Edmure Tully was a dear, and rooting the Freys out of Riverrun had done a good deal to help. Petyr Baelish being dragged to trial with Sansa Stark as star witness, and installing Bran Stark and Shireen Baratheon in their family seats did a great deal more.

And Willas was determined to charm her, explaining delicate points of politics and history, taking her riding, and being the opposite of Sirius in some ways and enough like him to interest her.

We were made to love, Jon had said, awkwardly and with much blushing, when the topic of his own marriage came up last visit. Her brother was not Georgie, but she was coming to adore him nonetheless. She almost wanted to matchmake him with Margaery, the poor girl needed someone kind...

She rose from her seat and gave him a swift kiss on the cheek, a careful, _public_ gesture of affection that…

Dammit, life was hard. But she was his wife, and there was rather important news she needed to tell him.

5.) The King of the Seven Kingdoms watched with amusement as his wife directed the meeting with a delicate smile and a stubborn lift of her chin, and the small group of motley observers who wanted to take her nephew- _his_ nephew- and kept his mouth shut for now, twirling his cane occasionally and running through the unspoken plan. Loras was positioned behind the red-garbed one with the unsettled shoulders, and he could snake his cane across and use the poisoned catch quickly enough on the darkly garbed one who looked as if he swallowed lemons. Rhaenys was without the bow the wildlings had taught her to use, but there was always a dagger somewhere, and Jorelle was at her back, and the Dornish page would run a message to Garlan and Harry. The woman with them, the one who had made Rhaenys’ mask crack briefly, she would be smuggled away for later.

(And  _Lilias_ \- gods, his eldest daughter might be caught as well, from the fragmented stories his wife had let him know, of her first husband and his friends. A message would have her sent by sea to the Water Gardens- Arianne would hide her among the older children there.)

“I was entrusted with the boy’s care,” Rhaenys said, a viper-like tilt to her head. She was fresh from court, steel and bronze pins forming a crown of braids and dressed in layers of black and red embroidered with suns and roses. It made a flesh and blood woman into something from the stained glass of the Great Sept, something that had been started by a young woman surrounded by angry warriors and hungry nobles. “I have done so, to the best of my ability. As my own ward, Harry can read and write multiple languages, has a circle of friends, rides as well as any boy his age- a great deal more fearlessly than I would like, I admit, but Elia swears he sticks to his capabilities. Out of seven kingdoms, I would say… my own son is higher in consequence, and perhaps my daughters…?” She frowned at Willas. Willas realized, with a flash of humor, that Alys and Aelinor meant that plurals could be used without fear.

“Perhaps Lord Stark and Lady Baratheon’s child,” he mused. “Though that will be a legal tangle.” Humphrey was looking up precedent for them, so far. Rhaenys, with a quiet chuckle, had suggested that the most Northern Stark child would be the one to inherit Winterfell. Willas had taken it for a jest, until the next night she woke screaming.

“But can you teach him what his parents wanted him to learn?” the eldest, who had introduced himself as Albus Dumbledore, asked. “If he goes to Hogwarts…”

“I would prefer tutors,” Rhaenys said, firmly.

“And you will have the Ministry fighting you every step of the way,” he said, eyes twinkling. “And there could be more interested parties, which would cause more problems.”

“Or we could just kill you, and any steps you took could be taken as a mistake,” Loras said idly, hand on the pommel of his sword. The man in red twitched at that.

“That does work,” Rhaenys said, and she smiled Oberyn’s smile. “Though it would stain the floor terribly, and I do hate to create a mess. For various reasons, which I do not need to explain to you, I _will_ , however, agree to a test year with Harry-  _if_  I feel it safe. He is a child of two worlds- I will give him the choice to decide which one he prefers.”

Willas holds Rhaenys that night, and learns the woman who accompanied them was her adoptive sister.  In the morning, the powder covers any signs of tears the Queen might have shed.

+1

The widowed Queen of the Seven Kingdoms was sitting in the godswood, traces of silver in her hair catching in the moonlight. She had found a fallen log and was contemplating something, bare feet peeking out in the creek and hems of her skirts damp.

“Georgie sent me here,” the man said, feeling too ragged for a scene out of a song. Except there had been songs about lovers reunited…

Had one gone to prison for something they mostly hadn’t done and the other wed and had children over a decade? He would need to find out, sometime. He'd have asked Mrs. Lupin, once, but she had died before he'd gone to Azkaban, and Mr. Leigh was still looking at him as if all of this was his fault.

“She always was a romantic,” Renee- Rhaenys, now- said, not looking at him. “You do have a talent for overturning my life, you know.”

“Sorry,” he said, for lack of anything else. He’d been warned about Willas, and the accident, and Renee’s grief. “God, I missed- I stole Mum Lynn’s mint when I crashed over at the cottage, to put on the pillow, because I could almost remember that your pillow smelled of it, but I couldn’t remember the smell, and there were no photos of you since…”

“Peter told me you died,” she said, meeting his eyes finally. There were shadows and lines, now, that had only been hinted at in old photos, but they cut her face into sharp clear lines. They looked like a warning- she could cut you, she was dangerous. “He wanted to know if you gave me Harry, and I lied, because I was frightened. He said Bellatrix had found you, and…” she shuddered. “One of my old professors had a job opening for a long-term care home in Wales, I thought it might be a good idea, a quick change…”

“Clever lady,” he said, curling his legs underneath him. “You did what I asked you to do.” He snorted. "So much more."

“Then Sarella and Dany pulled me here, and they died, and any way home was destroyed with them,” she said. “At least until Dumbledore came for Harry.” She placed a long hand on his, nails short in a way that triggered memories. Almost everything did- that was part of the price of Azkaban, he thought. But her hold was gentle, and he didn't hear an accusation in it. “I thought you were dead and I had two children to protect, Sirius.” Her grin turned rueful. “I hope you don’t mind that I picked Lilias after Lily and my birth mother Elia, rather than a star name?”

He chuckled. “Not even a middle name?”

“Georgiana,” she said firmly. “There was no option.”

"Good," he grinned. "Let my mother's ghost howl. Lilias Georgiana Black, half-blood and overturning all of what she preached. Not to mention Harry- James and Lily would have loved how you raised him. He was protective of his friends, even me, after knowing me all of about ten minutes. From what I heard, he has a knack for inspiring loyalty for it." He kissed the back of her hand, an old gesture that came back with the emotion. 

She flicked a glance at the knight on the stump, just within shouting range. Her own short bow was tucked near her skirts, and he wondered if anyone had tried anything.

“I had Lady Dayne talking to me,” he said, after a moment, and she froze.

“About the High Septon?” she said, voice very even. He wondered how badly she would take it if he offered her sympathy. He had only heard second hand reports of what she had needed to deal with, though Lady Dayne had made her opinion of what she would do if he tried to make this difficult very clear. He was clearly doomed to have to deal with terrifying redheads in any universe.

“Yes,” he said, trying for cool.

“My marriage to Willas was in good faith, and properly done in the light of the Seven,” she said, steel clear. It had been the tone that had argued him through a concussion or three, a few curses, fits of temper, and been one of the things he found himself missing most. “None of my children are bastards, and there shall be no rebellions after my death.”

“I won’t argue that,” he said, shrugging. “Hell, at least you didn’t think I betrayed James and Lily.”

She nodded at that, and he noticed one of her hairpins was loose. Could he snatch it?

“Unfortunately, as you are not dead…” she started, interrupted by a laughing ‘hey!’, “Our marriage is also still valid.” She sighed. “There is precedent, as Willas would point out. Of course, he would also be musing on the roles of two King Consorts, if he were still alive, but he was practically minded like that.”

He let her speak, knowing she’d keep going.

“He knew the politics, but I have been a stable queen for over a decade, and you were always good at getting people motivated. After a bit… Plus, Lilias does deserve to have a chance to get to know you,” she said, pulling a flower from the grass. “And I’m hardly as young as I used to be. I barely finished school when I came here, now I’m a mother and a widow. I would still have offers, but…”

Sirius found himself annoyed by her having offers, which was absurd, since it had been twelve years, but still… "You do realize that we're _the same age_?"

“I think I would like to try again, at least,” she said, those dark eyes nervous and just a bit hopeful. “We’ll probably mess it up hopelessly, but as long as I keep the kingdoms running smoothly…”

He grinned at her. “Together?”

“Together,” she agreed. 


End file.
